


cyborgs make do

by tatterdemalionAmberite (amberite)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aradia has a kind of partial Darth Vader suit, Bulges and Nooks, Car Sex, Cyborgs, Disability, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Light Angst, Pailing, Quadrant Polyamory, Xeno, disabled sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 07:39:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15814425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberite/pseuds/tatterdemalionAmberite
Summary: "Gosh," you play along, unbuttoning your shirt. "I'm not sure, maybe - nnnnh - you can disambiguate further -"She leans forward and kisses you. There's hardware in and around her mouth and your tongue bumps against it; senses a crackling of ghostly current, like you're feeling the energy that connects her flesh body with its artificial components, and there's something thrillingly intimate about it that makes you moan.Tavros discovers that rumors of Aradia's death have been exaggerated; they find each other in the outer colonies, and swipe right.





	cyborgs make do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViceroyOfMonteCristo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViceroyOfMonteCristo/gifts).



> Note to recipient: I hope you like this! My attempts at fluff always get complicated, whoops.

"Time has treated you damn well, Tavros," Aradia Megido says, taking your hand across the table. Her voice is different than you remember, a tinny synthetic ring to it; you're wondering about exactly how her modifications work, but you're not sure it's polite to ask, and even through the filter her tone is making you blush. "I like the wings. Are they Zgarel's work?" 

Okay, so maybe it _is_ all right to ask about her mods. 

"...Eoreze Paruua, actually." The surgeon had apprenticed with Zgarel for long enough that you trusted the biotech despite the lower price. "Honestly, I _thought_ they were pretty impressive, but now that I've seen your snazzy exoskeleton, my definition of 'impressive' has just scaled itself up. What does that thing _do_?" 

"A lot, both internal and external... but it's not a contest, silly! And, I mean, I think you're still legally a troll, whereas I'm technically dead." She sips the milkshake through her straw.

"Your skin looks great for someone who's technically dead," you blurt out, only stammering a little. "And also, uh, great for someone who's alive, even." 

Something about the way her smile shines through both the flesh and artificial halves of her face always seems to make it look mysterious, but the way the corner of her exposed eye crinkles makes it just as much comforting. "Thanks. You really glowed up, yourself. I missed you." 

"I didn't realize you were still alive," you tell her - meaning it to sound apologetic, but it comes out sounding plaintive.

"Yeah, that's the rough part of being technically dead; people you want to hear from can't find you either." She looks pensive for a moment. "You wouldn't happen to know if Sollux... made it, would you?" You shake your head, looking down. There's a strange click in Aradia's breathing as emotion desynchronizes her speech. "Sorry," she says. "I realize that's a pretty tacky question to ask someone I've just re-found on Troldr, but there's a reason I put the thing about unconventional relationship styles right up front. Okay, lots of reasons, but the fact that my door is basically always open to former quadrants is definitely one of them." She pauses again, letting her respiration catch up with her speech. 

"Does that... include me?" you ask. "Former quadrants, I mean?" You used to mess around together, a little, but you never really named what you were to each other, besides Team Charge.

"With reference to what I just said, you mean? Yeah," she says. There's a maroon blush in her gray cheek that makes you want to reach up and touch it, and you do, the backs of your fingers trailing across her face. She gets that smile in her eye again. "I mean, I wouldn't exactly kick you off the pailing platform for eating crackers regardless. Even if you weren't sporting Paruua mods, which…" Aradia synchronizes the pause perfectly this time, and gives an impressed chirp when she says "...may I just say, wow? I mean, this may be cheaper than a Zgarel, but not _that_ much cheaper." 

There's an unasked question in that, and you're about to preempt it with your usual offhand answer about selling rare Fiduspawn genesets but then you remember this is _Aradia_. "I, uh… found out that some of the cam sites pay pretty well, and in a related development, a lot of highbloods think of me as a flushed heartthrob type." You've found you have to take breaks from time to time, but the work has helped with your confidence. Talking about it makes you feel less bashful altogether, and you flash Aradia a cheeky grin. 

"No fucking shit!" she exclaims, and throws you an exuberant high-five. "Half the requests I fulfill are dumb as rocks but nanochitin isn't cheap and I've gotten so many good upgrades… plus other perks. Want the grand tour?" 

"Is that what they call innuendo?" you ask. 

"Only if you want it to be," she says, and waggles her brow at you. 

~ 

"It's called a _kahr_ ," Aradia says, the word foreign and unfamiliar on her lips. "They used to be a common form of transportation on this planet but they don't really work well for urban areas. But I know some folks who restore these, and I figured..." She pauses for breath. "...Well, I can't go long without the exoskeleton outdoors, but if you get a large enough one and seal it up well enough, you can take the indoors with you."

"Sounds pretty nice to me too." You like your chair better than using the powered frame that plugs into your spine and lets you control your legs, but going out often involves a lot of switching between them. "How are you liking the city, anyway? I've heard the clubs are a good time…"

"Oh, they are, but I can show you a better time than that." The _kahr_ obviously doesn't go everywhere either, but it's a place within itself; she opens the door and helps you in. "This used to have normal transport seats in it, but I had it redone so that other than the driver's chair everything folds down… and fixed the seals for environment control, and set up some special hardware… anyway, I basically have a portable safe room where we can be all by ourselves for hours and see the sights."

You stash your chair and get in using your powerlegs, then open the clamps that bind them, disconnect the plugs and let your lower half hang free of the enclosure. Aradia watches admiringly. 

"These are no-name tech," you say before she asks. "But the wings matter more to me anyway."

~

You've visited an old tunnel and a cliff over the ocean together and now you're at what she calls a _drive-in movie theater_. It took a while to figure out how not to hit your horns on the roof or walls of the _kahr_ , and you've ended up folding your seat back into place and reclining sideways on pillows, which is pretty relaxing. 

"There used to always be lots of these parked here, I've seen the shades of them… My psi is the wrong frequency for standard technological affinities, but this place remembers what it was, and I can work with that," Aradia says. She leans forward with intent excitement. The screen at the end of the long paved lot flickers to life; crackling music emanates from everywhere and nowhere as some string of alien language appears in ghostly grey. 

"...Can you read that?" you ask. 

"Sort of? It's naming all the people who made the movie... and the movie is called something like _Ancient Recreational Area_." On the screen, bipeds in helmets stand around looking alert as a crate moves into position.

"Is this," you ask, "the kind of date where we're supposed to pay attention to the movie, because to tell the truth, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to follow it, unless you think that it's particularly important to pay attention to -"

She smiles, the sleekly artificial half of her face glinting in the light of the screen. "It depends on whether you're more interested in animatronic scalebeasts or other things." 

"Oh, well, I'm not sure how to answer _that_ question," you say as sarcastically as possible.

She draws her claws down your back, between the muscles that operate your wings, folded up now but still attached. Her fingers are mostly original, a contrast to the sleek nanoalloy plating that reinforces her elbows and covers large swathes of her upper body. "Here, is this helping you come up with an answer?" she asks, emulating innocence badly as always. 

"Gosh," you play along, unbuttoning your shirt. "I'm not sure, maybe - nnnnh - you can disambiguate further -" 

She leans forward and kisses you. There's hardware in and around her mouth and your tongue bumps against it; senses a crackling of ghostly current, like you're feeling the energy that connects her flesh body with its artificial components, and there's something thrillingly intimate about it that makes you moan.

"That sounds like ambiguity melting," Aradia says when she breaks for air.

"That would be the case, if it was actually ambiguity, and not a fake lie for the purpose of being endearingly bratty."

She cracks up then, losing synchrony with her assisted breathing, laughing so hard it turns into hiccups. "I've missed you - _erk!_ \- ow." She winces. "I think I'm - _hic_ \- going to need to take this off before my body does anything more unpredictable in it. But I won't be able to talk as much with it off." 

She strips her shirt so she can tug off the armored panels over her arms and part of the plating on her chest. Underneath she is soft and dark gray, implants and scars breaking the surface. 

The flickering light of the screen shines through the windshield and palely illuminates her rumble spheres and grubscars. Tense music and growling scalebeasts pass briefly through your attention then lose their relevance as Aradia disconnects closures over her face and pulls the outer layer away; you can see more of her face moving underneath. More than you can see of most trolls' faces, her damaged lips not quite covering her fangs, her artificial eye moving awkwardly under an eyebrow that's turned silky white.

You're suddenly shy and babbling to cover it. "I think I've already told you, like, fifteen times today that you look like a total badass in your exoskeleton, but I somehow haven't told you yet that you look like a total badass without it, probably because you haven't taken it off before now, since I can't imagine that I wouldn't have told you that if I'd seen you -" She smiles again, and it's true, what you're saying; she's beautiful with the appliances on or off, and the happy crinkle reaches both eyes.

"Thanks," she says, "You're looking pretty great yourself -" her voice wispy now, with shallow breaths between words, but a thready purr vibrating through her. She hiccups once, but the attack seems to mostly be gone.

"I should tell you," you say, "I do have pailing function, but it's not quite normal."

"That's all right," she says, "just tell me where to touch -"

"Well, I can pail if you touch me in the usual places," you explain, "but I need to be touched above the waist to get off - there are a few different ways -"

"Mmm, like - here?" she says, and puts her mouth over one of your grubscars.

"Yes - fuck -" You're purring and whining. You don't have a clear idea of what's going on below your waist, but that's okay; the rest of you is more than making up for it, the shape of Aradia's teeth exquisite over sensitive nerves. The gland-filled sac where your body secretes slurry is one of the lowest places you can feel, and it's a hot and bright and sharp feeling that makes you ache for release. "It… doesn't always synchronize," you explain vaguely, gasping. "Works better if I'm the catcher -" 

"I think… I might be able… to figure out your timing," she says in her breathless whisper. "Come here - Tavros -" 

She lies back over the inset pail, her hard chitinous prosthetic legs sprawled out in the cushioned space, and you tug down your pants. The waistband catches on your swelling sheath; your bulge doesn't always respond to what you can feel, but when the fluid builds in that higher place in your abdomen it sometimes pushes on things downstairs, and that's what's - _oh_. Aradia is tugging on your shoulders, just trying to guide you to straddle her body, but right now it feels like every bit of skin you can feel is glowing with sensitivity and her claws across your upper back make you shiver and twitch as you use your arms to lever yourself into place. 

Oh, hey, your pants are gone. How about that. Right, telekinesis is useful even when you can't directly feel it happening. Your bulge might be more of a barometer than anything else but you still love to feel it pinned in place, swiping wetly over your stomach, and when she hikes up her skirt and slides into you, the feeling of expansion between your hips somehow echoes through deeper parts of you than she's touching directly, a pleasurable warmth in your core. _Fuck_ , you're gasping, _yeah, more,_ burying your face in the wild cascading curls of her hair as she runs her manicured hands over your grubscars and your smaller rumble spheres and the bases of your wings. You kiss her face, her mouth, and she kisses back greedily, rocks her hips underneath you. 

You reach down with your hand and feel the place where your bodies join, hot and moist, the shuddering of her bulge in you - know she's close to pailing, but not how close. You aren't quite to being able to get off, but it's okay, nobody gets your timing right on the first -

She buries her face in the spot at the juncture of your neck and collarbone and presses her teeth there and pinches at both of your grubscars with her fingers and you feel the expansion in your center that means she's flooding you and you cry out so loudly you're glad to be in the middle of nowhere as your gland throbs and throbs and waves of tingling euphoria wash over your body from there to the tips of your horns.

~ 

Aradia curls there with you for long minutes as slurry drains out of you in languid pulses. Then she cranes her neck and casts about with her arm, and you look at her questioningly.

"Need faceplate," she says, "want to say. Something long and awkward -"

"Long and awkward is fine with me," you answer. She restores the appliances to her face and chest, and you hear the shift in her breathing as they connect to their implanted components in her body.

"I want to do this again, if you do, and I don't ever want _this_ to just be about what Vriska did to us," Aradia tells you, "but I've wanted so badly to talk to you, because I can tell you things and you'll _get_ them - and I've wanted to tell you this: sometimes I look at myself and I see something more. The avatar of death deferred." She pauses for breath. "Even with all the pain and the nuisance of it - I see myself in the mirror and I'm so _happy_ , sometimes, so powerful. I feel you must be like that too. Am I right? I don't want her to ever know because I don't want her to take the credit for it."

You're not sure you feel the way she does, but you can see it from here, and it's wonderfully enticing. "Oh, I'm catching your drift. Let her think we're out here somewhere living as boringly as possible, if she thinks of us at all."

Aradia grins enormously. "The best revenge," she says.


End file.
